DISRUPTING THE INTERNET?

Over the last week, four major undersea cables have been disrupted (three were cut, with two of those co-located, and a fourth was malfunctioning). The damage so far includes reduced Internet service for most of the Middle East and a short term brown out of connectivity for India (which impacted India's outsourcing business). Rerouting and repairs should clean up the damage in the next week or so.

Some observations:

• Vulnerability. All of the same network vulnerabilities we see other infrastructures are in force with the Internet's long haul systems (the network analysis of systempunkts applies). If this was a real attack rather than a series of accidents (the geographical concentration is interesting in this regard), then this was likely a capabilities test that yielded data on response times, impact, and duration.
• Means. Attacks on undersea cables are within the capacity of small groups to accomplish. With precise mapping (these cables take very circuitous routes), a cable could be cut with as little as an anchor. However, nation-states are the most capable in this sphere (including, a growing number of micropowers). Why would a nation-state do this? Deterrence. Disconnection from the global communications grid is very likely to become a form of economic/social coercion in the future (for standard national security reasons all the way down to an inability/unwillingness to crack down on rampant Internet crime, which is growing into a HUGE global problem).
• Precision. It's very hard to precisely target an attack's damage. Regional impacts are unavoidable (collective punishment for everyone that connects to the target country?). Here's a final point to consider: closed systems like China's that route traffic through firewall choke-points, or other closely held infrastructure, are likely very vulnerable to an attack of this type.

Comments

[MattShultz]

Sure, you could do this with an anchor. Then again, Egypt says there were no ships in the area where the damage occurred:

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/theworld/2008/February/theworld_February77.xml§ion=theworld&col

Of course, if the cables were cut by subs, Egypt wouldn't have seen them. And who has lots of subs, and the motivation to throw a monkey wrench into the Middle Eastern economy, maybe as a not-so-subtle message? I don't think this was done by any global guerrillas or non-state actors; in this case, the source of the disruption is probably a bit more ... conventional.

[Valdis Krebs]

Here is a pre-9/11 network analysis of basic Internet structures...

http://www.orgnet.com/SocialLifeOfRouters.pdf

Pay attention to the network failure scenarios.

[Brad Spangler]

Seat of the pants analysis:

The Bad Guys(tm) make use of the internet and likely wouldn't like to see service disrupted to the Mideast.

The Western information analysis community likely wouldn't have to cut any cables to get what they want.

My best guess? Somebody wanted to (gently) make sure the Iranian oil bourse didn't open for business until after Super Tuesday.

[Valdis Krebs]

Who has got the contract for undersea cable repair???

[Duncan Kinder]

Bruce Schneier comments on this:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/fourth_undersea.html

[P-]

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/middle-east-internet-interruption-looks/story.aspx?guid=%7B6FD0D324%2D8FF9%2D4900%2DBCA9%2D614914BA3E87%7D

The Iranian Bourse? All i know is this The IRANIANS must be levid! Do we make our own best mortal enemies? We love to have it both ways, especially in the semantics. When are we able to lose well? Come to think of it, maybe why 9-11 occurred. Somebody had something to say. LOSE WELL?
:)

[adam]

I'm fairly phlegmatic about this one. People I know at Lloyds say that undersea cables for telecommunications are more or less understood to be pretty vulnerable to ship anchors. It happens all of the time. Its just that we've had a fair few of them recently and the internet has noticed.

I remember one thing I was working on with a P&I club and their underwriter knew where the cabling was throughout the New York Harbour and Hudson area (there is far more stuff underwater than I'd have ever thought). Which would have been impressive, except that he'd done claims for every single one of them at various times.

[Azr@el]

Statistics happen; roughly or so a hundred incidents affecting undersea cables happen a year. People are able to put bread on the table, pay their mortgage, send their kids to college and manage to buy their mistress a bauble or two by repairing the damage to these cables and laying new ones. ( typical lifespan ~20-30 years). I agree that a undersea cables are easy prey for those inclined towards breaking the backbone of the net ( satellite capacity won't be able to take up the slack if raiders hit the cables). But that's still a tactic of the future since no one has the balls to play that sort of game yet. Remember, no one wants to overthrow the system, they just want a seat at the table , or some more elbow space at the table. Wake me when the real global insurgents show up.